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CHIPMAKER Intel has announced a breakthrough in optical communications in the form of the first silicon based 50Gbps laser transmitter and receiver parts produced in its labs.

The company said that within five years this milestone development will lead to low-cost optical links inside computers that might scale to speeds up to 8Tbps or higher.

Chipzilla’s silicon photonics data link is still being developed in the lab, but the firm predicts it will deliver semiconductor chip manufacturing economies of scale to realise low-cost optical communications in PCs, consumer electronics and datacentres.

Dr Mario Paniccia, the director of Intel’s photonics technology lab said that the industry is reaching the limits of copper wiring, with speeds above 10Gbps requiring more energy to transmit beyond short distances. Using photonic communications over optical fibre solves the problem, but existing technology is too expensive.

“Because of the cost, because of the bulkiness, the costs are still limiting use only for telecoms. It is very difficult to drive use of optical in the PC or in and around everyday devices,” said Paniccia.

Intel’s technology uses a hybrid silicon laser integrated into the transmitter chip along with other components such as the modulator and multiplexer to combine several laser beams as separate channels for transmission over optical fibre. The design enables Intel to fabricate the transmitter and receiver using processes similar to those it uses to manufacture CPU chips.

“What could happen if we take the benefits of silicon manufacturing, the ability to do high-volume low-cost, highly-integrated silicon processing, and combine that with the laser? We can now start driving optical communications anywhere, everywhere, to any place,” Paniccia said.

The transmitter and receiver can also be integrated into equipment using standard circuit board assembly methods. Intel said it has developed a low-cost passive connector to attach the fibre optic cable.

The photonic data link prototype Chipzilla has developed uses four 12.5Gbps channels, multiplexed to create a 50Gbit/s link, but Paniccia claimed it can scale up to 25, 40 or 100Gbps channels and scale out to eight or more laser channels on a chip. He said this means that 1TBps optical links are easily within reach.

Paniccia speculated that high-speed photonic data links will revolutionise high-performance and cloud computing. Compute and storage elements will not need to be located close together, for example, but could be far apart. “This is just the beginning,” Paniccia predicted.

Intel said products based on this revolutionary technology might be produced within three to five years. µ

INTEL HAS STEALTH RELEASED a six-core 3.2GHZ Core i7-970 that’s already up for grabs online.

Intel has launched a couple of processor upgrades recently without so much as any flag waving so we weren’t too surprised to see another addition hit retail.

Pop along to Newegg and the website has the processor listed for £589 with free shipping and available to purchase now. It’s much cheaper than the Core I7-980 that starts at around £800 but comes with much the same features.

The Intel six-core Core i7-970 is based on the same 32nm Gulftown build as Intel’s other Core i7 processors but has six CPUs on the chip. It also has a 12MB L3 cache and a triple-channel memory controller. Punters and tweakers will also get more oomph from the chip with Turbo Boost.

Intel hasn’t made this official yet so it will probably unveil its roadmap when it’s already late. µ

USER FRIENDLINESS died a death and one wonders what catchphrase will emerge from Intel’s research  that will, in the company’s own words, reinvent the computing experience through a deep understanding of people.

Future users’ interaction with computers will be through speech, gestures, objects and touch, according to Intel’s chief technology officer Justin Rattner, who announced an interaction and experience research division for these modes of using computers at the company’s 30 June ninth annual Research at Intel Day event. One wonders if this sudden interest in people and their technology has anything to do with the Computex announcement of the mysterious Canoe Lake that sounded like an Intel prototype laptop.

According to Intel’s research day propaganda, it has been building up its capabilities in the “user experience and interaction” areas for over a decade and has come to a shocking realisation already. “We’ve learned, for example, that…browsing the web at 10 feet [from the screen] is an experience few people relish,” said Rattner. Well yes, quite, the text gets a bit hard to read.

But in other revelations about Intel’s technology show case day, a disturbing future looms on the horizon. The company says, “Also demonstrated was a more futuristic example, a computer that could read a user’s thoughts, replacing the need for typing altogether.” Read thoughts!? Perhaps the company is thinking of an Intel powered fridge that can figure out when you want another beer? Now that would truly be user friendly. µ